Ahead of Her Days of Our Lives Homecoming, Alison Sweeney Reveals Her All-Time Favorite Storyline (2024)

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1/23

<p>Katherine’s expression says it all. In the mid-2000s, “there was a storyline in which Jill was supposed to give everything up and go into Witness Protection with Bobby and Brittany,” Jess Walton reminded Soaps.com in 2023. “Brittany and her child were living with Jill and Katherine, and Jill had come to love the baby. So a script came down where Jill said she was going to join them in Witness Protection posing as the child’s nanny.” If that sounds ridiculous to you, it did to the Emmy winner as well. “I couldn’t understand how this wildly over-ambitious woman could even think about giving everything up to raise someone else’s baby!”</p>

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2/23

<p>Back in 2015, viewers weren’t the only ones left scratching their heads over the Salem PD detective’s decision to let a snowstorm convince him to bail on rescuing Abigail from Ben. “Chad was like, ‘I’m going to just go myself,'” Galen Gering told <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/wp-admin/_wp_link_placeholder" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a>years later. “He was able to save the day. That was very disappointing to me. When you work on a case for a long time, you want to see it through.”</p>

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3/23

<p>As you can see, even Pam soured on all that sweetness. When John McCook and Jennifer Gareis were first paired as Eric and Donna, honey — and the “honey bear” nickname that she gave her lover — became part of the couple’s canon. “Obviously, it was a lot of fun, and the audience enjoyed it years ago,” McCook told Soaps.com in 2023. “But Jennifer and I were both ready to see this love story treated with respect. Donna isn’t just some bimbo Eric fooled around with, he had genuine feelings for her. So we were happy that we got to play these two as a truly loving couple as they faced Eric’s health crisis.”</p>

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4/23

<p>After four years as Alan and Monica’s son, Steve Burton wasn’t feeling challenged enough to stick around and keep playing the same beats anymore as the squeaky-clean Mr. Nice Guy of the Quartermaine family. Thankfully, “Maurice Benard really took me under his wing,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/584408/general-hospital-maurice-benard-steve-burton-rare-picture/" target="_blank">the Emmy winner said</a> in 2019, and before Burton could hit the exit, his character was transformed into Sonny’s “stone-cold” right-hand man.</p>

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5/23

<p>To this day, Joshua Morrow is still bummed about the decision to kill off Kelly Sullivan as Nick’s wife Sage in 2016. “Honestly, I think that was a huge mistake on the part of the show. It never should have happened,” he told Soaps.com in 2023. “They should have found something else for the character to do.” The MVP can acknowledge that “it was a beautiful story, so on that level, I sort of get it. But all I see is that they took Kelly Sullivan away from our show.” And that part, <em>we</em> don’t get, either!</p>

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6/23

<p>Soap actors know full well that storylines ebb and flow, and not everyone is going to be front and center all the time. But there comes a point when they have to ask themselves, “Am I <em>ever</em> gonna be tossed the ball again?” Such was the case with Martha Madison. “Over time, Belle just became less and less important. She didn’t get to drive story,” she told Soaps.com in 2023. “I don’t want to be a curtain or wallpaper, just hanging in the background to talk about other characters who are actually driving storyline.”</p>

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7/23

<p>In 2023, Kim Matula <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/news/654028/bold-beautiful-will-kim-matula-return-hope-soaps/" target="_blank">told Soaps.com</a> that during her six-year run as Hope, she wasn’t crazy about the way that, no matter how many times her character got burned, she was drawn to Liam like a moth to a flame. “So often, I wanted to shake her and just be like, ‘You need to get it together, girl! Get over this man who treats you like garbage!'” Matula also couldn’t get on board with Hope’s turn as a waffler. “When she was torn between two brothers, I was like, What? Do you want Wyatt or Liam? Pick a man!’ But of course, that’s not how soaps work.”</p>

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8/23

<p>Peter Bergman can’t say that he wasn’t challenged by the 2015 arc in which nemesis Victor replaced him with an evil doppelganger. But did it make sense? Eh. “It wasn’t strongly based in anything,” he told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/icymi-peter-bergman-interview-1729788/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2023. “It was [former headwriter Charles Pratt Jr.] deciding there’s a guy in a prison in South America who looks and sounds exactly like Jack [to the point] that the woman in his life wouldn’t recognize the difference. It was so hard to do, and I was just dying every day trying to make it work.”</p>

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9/23

<p>The goal of every pair of lovers is to live happily ever after, right? Except on a soap opera. So once Josslyn and Cameron finally settled into coupledom, it was kinda… pfft. “Personally, William [Lipton] and I found it a little boring toward the end,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/722754/eden-mccoy-discusses-josslyn-cheating-on-cameron/" target="_blank">Eden McCoy admitted</a> in 2024. “We were together for a million years in soap opera terms, as I call it. And nothing was really happening [in our storyline].” Which begs the question: If nothing actually happens in a storyline, is it even really a storyline? Get back to us on that one; we’re thinking.</p>

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10/23

<p>After Adam was SORAS’d into an adult, the conniver was set to seduce attorney Rafe in 2009 in order to keep the secret that he’d been gaslighting stepmother Ashley in drag as Victor’s previous wife, Sabrina. Rather than embrace the twists and turns, Adam’s then-portrayer <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/4355/chris-engen-statement-on-quitting-young-and-the-res/" target="_blank">Chris Engen quit the show</a> while insisting that he was not a hom*ophobe. “Many of my dearest friends are hom*osexuals,” he said. Regardless, “I was not comfortable with many of the challenges they presented before me… In the end, I didn’t feel that decisions were being made in my best interests, personally or professionally.” As of this writing, Engen’s last IMDb credit had been added just three years after his exit.</p>

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11/23

<p>From demonic possession to shapeshifting masks to “Hey, today you’re a priest!” the Peaco*ck soap is well known but not always well loved for its logic-defying twists of plot. Especially when they are being used to tear apart a couple that we all know belongs together. “The hardest obstacles,” Drake Hogestyn told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/icymi-drake-hogestyn-and-deidre-hall-interview/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2018 — and choosing his words with care —“were sometimes with some of the stories that I don’t know were written a way that played to our strengths. And that is where some of the waters got muddied… ”</p>

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12/23

<p>In the early 2000s, the ABC soap paired Nancy Lee Grahn and Lane Davies as Alexis Davis and Cameron Lewis in hopes of recapturing the magic they created in the 1980s as Mason Capwell and Julia Wainwright on <em>Santa Barbara.</em> Great idea on paper, but on screen? Not so much. “You take the man I have the most chemistry with in my career, the greatest love story of my career, bring him on <em>General Hospital</em> and make it look like we have no chemistry at all,” Grahn marveled to <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/exclusive-lane-davies-on-his-almost-surreal-return-to-general-hospital/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2014. “It takes real skill to make that happen. And by the way, I ain’t blaming me or Lane!”</p>

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13/23

<p>There would have been no point to objecting to the storylines on this whackadoo soap, they were so out-there. But what its cast could’ve done without was the on-screen days that went on for weeks of taping. “We all committed to wearing clothes for 30 days,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/passions/news/626062/passions-lindsay-hartley-crazy-plots-will-cancelled-soap-return/" target="_blank">laughed Lindsay Hartley</a>, who played trouble magnet Theresa for the entirety of the show’s run. “I’ll never forget my engagement party. I had this peach dress with rhinestones.” By the time the shindig was finally a wrap, “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t ever want to see this dress again!'”</p>

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14/23

<p>Our best attempt at counting the number of times that Ridge and Brooke have tied the knot is eight — and that’s just with each other. So the never-ending game of ring toss has to end, in Thorsten Kaye’s estimation. “It’s time for them to stop with this back-and-forth,” he told Soaps.com in 2023. “Being married doesn’t mean you’re boring, and at some point, it has to stop being about Ridge always chasing another woman. There are plenty of other challenges they can face if they’re going to be together. And obviously, they are going to be together, because, as one of them has to say every couple of days, it’s their destiny. Although honestly, given how often they’ve cheated or divorced or whatever, I’m not sure that word means what they think it means.”</p>

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15/23

<p>The late, great Jeanne Cooper was not a fan of Soap-Opera Rapid-Aging Syndrome, whether on her show or any other. “What took a wrong turn,” the <em>Young & Restless</em> <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/27485/the-young-and-the-restless-interview-jeanne-cooper/" target="_blank">legend told Soaps.com in 2012</a>, “is taking all the 7-year-olds and turning them into 25-year-olds. You know, you walk upstairs, you’re 7 years old, you come downstairs and you’re 17.” (Or in the case of <em>General Hospital</em> youngster Spencer, you go off to boarding school and come back a hunk.) Katherine’s portrayer figured out the perfect way to solve that problem, though, at least for herself. Not only did she avoid boarding schools, but “I stopped going up my stairs,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t have that kind of time to spare!”</p>

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16/23

<p>It isn’t so much a <em>storyline</em> that Courtney Hope hasn’t liked as much as what viewers have <em>extrapolated</em> from the plots in which Sally has gotten twisted on both her current show and <em>Bold & Beautiful.</em> “I’m obviously very protective of [my character],” she told Soaps.com in 2024. So “I don’t love that some people think of her as a gold digger. She is 100 percent not. She has the wherewithal to do it on her own, and she deserves that. And often, when the men in her life offer her money, she fights it.” Not necessarily to the bitter end, however. As a result, “I would love for her to be able to rely on the street smarts and experience that she’s gained just from living the life she’s lived.”</p>

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17/23

<p>While Eric Martsolf would be the last person to begrudge anyone a frontburner storyline, he did lament to Soaps.com in 2024 that Alex and Xander’s feud had nearly KO’d Brady’s family ties. “His roots have been slightly disregarded in that sense. So I do think it’s important to remind the audience that he is a player in the Kiriakis family and has a lot of history in that department. You forget how much Brady is a Kiriakis just because his last name is Black. It tends to get overlooked. But his mother was Isabella Kiriakis. He’s ingrained in that family and, hopefully, will continue to be.”</p>

Image: NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

18/23

<p>Legend has it that when Victoria Wyndham was first presented with the story of Rachel Cory’s malevolent lookalike Justine Kirkland in 1995, she was tickled pink. It is, after all, a rite of passage for almost every daytime great to play out a doppelganger plot! But by the time it became clear that Justine would subsist on a steady diet of chewed scenery, her portrayer was said to be more than ready to have a fork stuck in the arc (and a letter opener in Justine).</p>

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19/23

<p>To put it mildly, Laura Wright and Steve Burton were not ape over the 2006 storyline that found Carly and Jason chasing after a chimp that was believed to be source of Port Charles’ encephalitis outbreak. “The monkey” was the worst, Burton said in 2017. “Everyone knows that <a href="https://www.soapsindepth.com/posts/abc/general-hospital-laura-wright-steve-burton-146314" target="_blank">we hated the monkey</a>!” The feeling wasn’t mutual, however. The vets’ simian co-star loved Burton… or at least “the monkey loved Steve’s shoes,” Wright recalled. “He would just kiss his feet and chew on his feet!”</p>

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20/23

<p>The year that Victor married Sharon, who’d previously been hitched to both of his sons, viewers balked, and so did Eric Braeden. “The storyline actually pissed me off!!” he <a href="https://publish.twitter.com/?url=https://twitter.com/chris_attaway/status/1788184584342950123" target="_blank">tweeted</a> in 2024. “I had envisioned an entirely different scenario! One in which he <em>never</em> married Sharon! It was ridiculous!” The much-missed Jeanne Cooper wasn’t a fan, either. “Even the thought that he would do it…turns him into a sort of lascivious old man,” Katherine’s much-missed portrayer <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/27485/the-young-and-the-restless-interview-jeanne-cooper/" target="_blank">told Soaps.com</a> with a laugh. “‘Everybody, bring your daughters indoors, Victor’s out tonight!'”</p>

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21/23

<p>Although “Cin” shippers might gasp at the the mere thought, Victoria Konefal wasn’t altogether thrilled that Ciara and Ben’s pairing became so mega-successful in the late 2010s. “The problem with being part of a supercouple is that the audience doesn’t want to see you with anyone else. Not only romantically but even in scenes with other characters,” she once lamented to Soaps.com. “Some viewers only want to see Ben and Ciara in scenes together, period. That makes me a little crazy, to be honest!”</p>

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22/23

<p>In 2016, Ava swapped out ex-lover Morgan’s bipolar medication with placebos in hopes of protecting daughter Kiki by keeping her from dating the next-gen mobster. Maura West told <em>Soap Opera Digest</em> in 2023 that she had to focus on her character’s fear that the relationship put Kiki in danger. “That’s how I could sell it to myself… I didn’t love that, to be honest. But I don’t have to love everything that Ava does, I just have to do it as best I can.”</p>

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23/23

<p>“Everyone knows that’s kind of a standard joke with Peter Bergman,” the actor himself told<em> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/25/young-and-the-restless-peter-bergman-30-years-jack-abbott/4253741002/" target="_blank">USA Today</a></em> in 2019.“Just bring up Keemo, and he starts to wince.” Yeah, we know. The mid-1990s storyline in which it was revealed that Jack had served in Vietnam and unknowing had a son with lost love Luan was, to put it mildly, not his favorite. “That came from far left field,” he said later, speaking with <em>Soap Opera Digest</em>, “and smacked me alongside the head.” It wasn’t the character of Keemo that Jack disliked, of course, but the WTF-ness of the twist. So now, “whenever I am displeased with a storyline,” he laughed to <a href="https://www.soapcentral.com/young-and-restless/news/2013/0403-bergman.php" target="_blank">SoapCentral</a> in 2013, “all I have to do is think ‘Keemo,’ and I realize how bad things could get.”</p>